


Lost; Lost; Found

by Robin_Hood



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, M/M, i guess, i have no clue, kind of, mostly happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:39:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin_Hood/pseuds/Robin_Hood
Summary: Sooo this is all centered around the whole lost lost found line, and I had a sudden inspiration thanks to the discord. I hope you enjoy it!





	Lost; Lost; Found

Because of how lonely he had felt, the change was explosive and rocked him to his very core. Before, he had floated on an empty sea, rocking gently this way and that, accompanied only by his thoughts, and whatever was currently in his duffle bag. Now, there was land in sight, a land inhabited by welcoming arms, and the possibility of home. 

_He was lost._

He drifted in a sea of names and countries, none of which were his, all of them merely stepping stones to another. It was all, simply put, a method of self-preservation for himself and others. Somewhere along the way, he realized just how empty he was. Realized that he didn’t know who he was. Maybe at the time, when accompanied by his mother, that had been a good thing, but things were changing. 

_“I’m not lost” “But never found”_

Staying lost got harder and harder as he came to know Neil Josten better. He shared characteristics with Chris, Alex, and Stefan, such as DNA, true eye and hair colors, and a bone-crushing desire to play Exy. But Neil Josten was different from them. 

Neil Josten loved the color orange, and the rush of playing and winning, with a team that welcomed him with all of his secrets and all of his flaws. Neil Josten was a loudmouthed nineteen-year-old who was unafraid to get into trouble. 

Neil Josten was a martyr who would go to great lengths to protect his teammates, even to the lengths of surrendering his safety to the hands of an egotistical child.

This was a person who was foolish, someone who was throwing aside years of hard work on his mother’s behalf. This was a selfish person. 

But Neil Josten was still merely a name to all of them, as well as the body it labeled.   
He was nothing.

_He was lost._

Nathaniel Wesninski was reborn through fire and pain, returning to the world by the knife, and a silent wish goodbye to the home he’d been given. 

The Butcher’s son, they called him. 

Junior. 

Nathaniel had spent his formative years watching people crumble before the blade of his father through windows, and choking back sobs while his skin burned and bruised. He’d grown up with blades pressed into his hands, encouraged to wound. The same blades were pressed to his own skin if he resisted, or cried. 

This was a child raised in and through violence, brought up to thrive on the sound of screams, and the scent of blood. This was a child who became one with violence. But as Nathaniel finds the man he fears more than anything, the one he calls father, sinking his weapon into Nathaniel’s countenance, he realizes that no, this isn’t what he wants. 

Ah, but hope, as _he_ said, was a dangerous disquieting thing that couldn’t be trusted to do anything but disappoint. Nathaniel knew who he was, yet was lost in the oblivion of what that meant. 

He was nothing more than another pig going off to the slaughter. 

Even when the seemingly redemptive sounds of a gun broke through his pain induced haze, Nathaniel knew that even if he wasn’t currently dead, at the hands of his father, it wouldn’t take long. 

So he laughed to the sky as he stated his name, and allowed them to take him away as everything faded to black.   
No, he wasn’t dying now. Surely, he would be though. 

That’s what hospitals were, after all. A dead end for most, and for a select few, release back into the world until their inevitable return at the end when the hospital and death would welcome them back with open arms. 

His last request is something he believed impossible, but not so much when he found himself knelt willingly in front of the person that might just be able to save him from himself. He had let them go, but the remembrance of a key brought him back.   
Nathaniel Wesninski died at the hands of a savior, and Neil Josten was reborn by the hands of a lover, and a set of keys. 

_He was found._

Neil Josten was real. _He was real._

Maybe it was the keys, the kissed, or the truths exchanged for other truths exchanged as the two maneuvered their way across careful love, and the exy season. Maybe it was his stint in Evermore made purely as an attempt to protect someone he cared about. 

Maybe it was the night he spent with his hands hopelessly tangled in Andrew’s hair, wondering how to say that he wanted to be more than nothing and that he was falling recklessly and hopelessly in love with a pipe dream of his own. 

Maybe it was the simple acceptance offered by his team when they took him back to fox tower after everything they knew about him crashed around their ears with merely the promise of complete opacity when they arrived. 

It was how at home he had felt when they’d all piled into the dorm room, and

_“It’s not about blood”_

It was the acceptance. It was the keys. It was the kisses. It was the truth. 

It was Andrew, in his silence and his ‘I hate you’s’ and the ever-increasing percentage. 

It was the possibility of a future that he had thought impossible his entire life. 

He was the ability he had to allow himself to live in one place without feeling the crushing paranoia that it was all going to end with his death. 

It was knowing that finally, he was something, someone, and he wasn’t alone. 

_He was found._


End file.
